Debutante
by HeWhoMustWrite
Summary: Enter Abigail de Gabirelli, Heiress to the Duchy of Sardinia, Dower, Depressed and hated by God himself.


**While History belongs to no one, _Crusader Kings_ the franchise in which this is set, is owned by _Paradox Interactive Studios. _No copyright infringement has been intended, no profit has been made and all original-characters belong to myself, the author, while all historic characters portrayed belong to history, though they are few in number.**

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_**Debutante**_

**A Fiction**

In 867 AD the world was a very different place. The Americas had not yet been discovered even by Leaf Eriksson, the once mighty Roman Empire, now encompassing only the eastern domains of its once continent spanning girth has fallen into the perpetual darkness that was the Rise of Feudalism which had begun four hundred years earlier with the Fall of Rome. The House of Macedon has taken hold of Constantinople as the Petty Kings of England, not united since the time of King Arthur and just prior to the ascension of Alfred the Great are under assault by the Norse Lords of the Great Heathen Army, who have come to Britannia to slay Ælla, King of Northumbria. South in France, that King and Emperor known as Charles the Great; Charlemagne has been dead since 814, and the mighty Carolingian Empire, built on the ashes of Western Rome has been splintered between his sons, Charles 'the Bald' in what will one day become northern France and Ludwig 'the German' in what will one day be Germany are the two most important of these four. They rule those nations that will come to dominate the continent of Europa during the middle ages and later still.

In the East where one day the mighty nation of Russia will rise up, Norse lords cut swaths of territory from the local Slavs as the Petty King Rurik takes for himself the very foundations of that legendary medieval state of Novgorod. Further east still, beyond the beetling precipices of Constantinople lays the Middle East, barely united under the ragged Abbasid Empire, scheming lords threaten to topple all that which the Prophet Muhammad and his successors have worked for, while in Persia the last of the Zoroastrian Governors struggle to maintain their independence from the Muslim Lords who have conquered their once mighty empire while northward in the Caucus Mountains and the steppes beyond, in the Khanate of Khazaria the diaspora of Judaism finds a home and the mighty Khanate of Cummania has yet to come into being.

Meanwhile in Africa, Byzantium has been driven from the gates of Egypt for long while and Muslim Lords carve out their kingdoms in the desert, save for the Kingdoms of Nubia and Abyssinia, shining beacons of Christianity. Through all of this, there are the islands of the Mediterranean; Crete has been stripped from the Byzantine Romans, for now, and the other islands of Mare Nostrum are either independent, or subjugated by various lords. Two however, stand out; Sardinia and Corsica have been united under a single government however tenuous since 865, the Duchy of Sardinia being declared just this passing January, during the last of the cold months as the Grand Duke was crowned, an old and scarred man not expecting to see much longer to live.

The Duke, Marcus Gabirelli has no sons, but is not heirless. Despite the male-dominated world of the middle ages, the Duchy of Sardinia recognizes hereditary succession of the Agnatic-Cognatic variety, that is to say that women are eligible, if there are no men, which is indeed the case. The Duke's daughter is a very young woman, though by our modern standards only, by the standards of the day she is an adult, freshly so at sixteen years of age. Abigail Gabirelli is already doomed to a loveless political marriage to strengthen the Duchy, promised to a far off Asutrian Prince by the name of Rubio, neither of whom have so much met the other.

Her Ducal Highness is a stark contrast to the women of the day, thinner and thought to be sickly and ill due to her lack of weight, she had high cheekbones and a sculpted physique from spending her childhood trying to climb towers in between her mother, the now late duchess-consort, teaching her the proper ways of being a lady. Her red hair is an anomaly for the dark haired Italian peoples, though none dare say anything about it, and much to the dislike of the Court Bishop, she is left-handed. Like her father, Abigail is tall but not dominating, her slender figure makes her far less than imposing around heavily armored men, and conniving courtiers who spread gossip and plots. Wrapped in the finest linens and cotton imported from Egypt itself under the auspicious eyes of merchants from Amalfi, that maritime republic which would one day be consumed by Salerno and Genoa, she looked quite tiny.

Despite the longing of nostalgia, white was never in the medieval wardrobe of the affluent outside of funerals and her dresses were brightly colored with expensive dyes that no one but nobility could ever hope to afford. As not only a noble but one of the few women of the medieval world outside of Byzantium that would have power, Abigail's life was not at all bad, were it not for her approaching and quietly dreaded debutante coming in April with the Spring, she would have no complaints. _"You have a duty to the people, and to God. Banish these unholy thoughts." _

The Bishop had told her, banish those 'unholy thoughts' that plagued her mind and her being so readily, under constant assault from her own thinking. She did so faithfully, as any good Christian would do, obedience to God was the only thing that kept them above the decadent, sinful Pagans and Muslims... Then everything changed. It was the third of February, 867 AD when her life changed. Whether for better or for worse, history does not remember.

**February 3rd 867 AD**

**The Duchy of Sardinia-Corsica**

Waves lapped at the shore line, cold, biting wind swept over the larger of the two islands in the ducal union set forth by her father. Sharp green eyes looked out over the sea with a sense of longing, and an acknowledgment of dread. Beyond the steel-blue waves of the sea lay her future, the future of her duchy and her people, the people she'd a duty to, and the station she had to fulfill. A job she neither wanted nor desired, yes, she was schooled in politics and quite adept at them, she was intelligent and keen of mind, capable of malevolence but had no desire for it. A miserable union awaited her and long years of quiet suffering while some tanned half-Moor was cursed to call a woman who would never love him his wife and as a matrilineal marriage, he would never even have the cold comfort of his sons being of his house, as they would be Gabirellis.

She could not feel sorry for the Prince while she was so conflicted in her own dower depression at the life that lay ahead of her, an existence of misery, of false smiles and false strength, an illusion that would eventually crumble away to the wretched wreckage that would be her mind, body and soul itself at the end of her life. Even as the cold wind whipped at her she could find no remorse for anyone but herself, selfish perhaps, but entirely true. There was only so many times the dog could be kicked before it would simply lay down and die, and the Duchess thought most grimly, that was precisely what had happened to her. The preaching of the Bishop, the cold looks from the people who _knew_ she was different when different was tantamount to blasphemy. The lengthy sermons that reached her the most however, were the ones that affirmed in her beleaguered, tired mind, that God himself, hated her for the simple act of her existence, that he hated her simply because she was _breathing. _Such thoughts did not leave a good mark on a person, even one of powerful iron will, which she had not had for long while.

Abigail remained buried in her thoughts, coming to sit on a cold mostly flat rock with her sharp green eyes looking outward, not really seeing in her dejection, simply staring into nothing. Somewhere behind her she heard the sound of boots and the clink of chainmail, the shuffling of a person that was no doubt sent to collect her and bring her back to the castle that overlooked one small part of the island. "My lady." The voice that called out she recognized, it belonged to Ottavio, a knight-errant who was dejure her bodyguard, defacto her friend who was never too far away but never too close to crowd her during her adventures across the small island. "Darkness approaches, his lordship requests you return to the safety of the castle." Ottavio had a loud and boisterous voice of a kindly sort of tone that when he spoke people listened but they didn't cower in fear or shrink away like when other lords spoke.

It was a voice that made Abigail look up from her half-trance and notice the sun was indeed quite low in the sky at this point, causing her to sigh deeply, her breath clearly visible in the cold air. The Heiress stood and dusted herself appropriately, assuring that there was no speck of dirt clinging to her dress or form she stepped down from her rock and turned to see her escort. Octavio was as with most knights-errant a younger man, in his middle twenties, like most he was lightly scarred but nothing disfiguring, he had brown hair as most Italians did and striking blue eyes that knowingly looked out on the world and he was as expected of a knight, very fit of form and powerfully built, though he was not monstrously large. As his approach had given way to knowing he wore a shirt of mail over his simple coat which was an off-beat white, a sign of his relative poverty, roughly crafted leather boots covered his feet and as with all men-at-arms, a sword hung heavily from his side.

The sight of him brought the first of many shallow, false smiles to the heiress's face in greeting to her friend. He knew all of her hiding spots throughout the island, and was always the one that was sent, for which she was glad, she had no patience for the rest even before when she smiled readily and freely. The two walked together for some time as the sun retreated beyond the horizon and the darkness of night fell, there was no baying of wolves, thankfully none were nearby, though some did live on the island.

The road was little more than a dirt thing where the grass had been tread thin by people's walking, the paved roads, built by the Romans themselves, existed only in the cities any more, in the distant darkness the shadow of the ruins of one of their mighty aqueducts, one of the only on the island, that once brought water to cities and towns now sat derelict and quarried for its stone. As they walked, the somber thought that often came to Abigail's mind when she was in conversation with passing Byzantines, was that once this island had belonged to Rome, the Mother of the World. It was true that it had faded from the common memory, but her education at the hands of a Greek tutor had assured she knew of the glory that a scant four hundred years earlier had existed, and still in some form did exist in the east out of Constantinople, but it always shook her whenever she looked around and saw the ruins, that even the Romans had not been eternal, and they had ruled the world.

Eventually after several more minutes of walking steadily the duo arrived. The looming figure of the Duke's castle was clearly visible even against the back drop of the deep, black, night as the only source of light in the sea of blackness around them. It gave her some hollow amusement to wonder if any of the stones in the battlements of her home had once been part of the distant water-carrier, it was likely in hindsight.

The portcullis slammed shut behind them with a metallic clangor of noise followed swiftly by the creak of aged boards and the tell tale slam of the wood doors of the castle's gate. The stone walls of the castle's courtyard dominated and went high into the sky, reaching up to brush the very fabric of the heavens. The Heiress was ushered into the Keep of the castle with her knight following, flanked quickly by the silent uttering of servants who she brushed off as she was directed to her chambers, as though she had not memorized their location despite having had them her entire life.

At the heavy wooden door to her bed-chamber she was left alone for a moment, even her ever present knight left her side, it was not proper for him to go any further. It was only a moment however before her handmaiden appeared, an older woman with graying brown hair by the name of Irene, very much a mother-figure in her life, and helped her at peeling off the layers of clothing that sheltered her from the outside world's bitter cold, a fire crackled merrily in the hearth however to wash away any such cold inside the castle, and the floors of the individual chambers were covered in lavishly warm fur carpets, as were the beds covered with warm linen. Irene, working quickly and quietly, assisted Abigail's change to a far simpler night-gown made of plain cotton, dyed a harsh primary yellow at the heiress's insistence, before the heiress allowed herself in all her dark thoughts to be led to an expansive and expensive bed of carefully spun wool covered in furs, at which point the only kind moment she had every given day after all of the badgering and the loathing, the cold looks and the knowing stares was that single moment when Irene pulled the linen up over her small form and bade her a good night's sleep with all the kindness and caring compassion imaginable in the world, that single moment when she could forget that almost the entire world hated her, because at least one person in it still loved her enough to tuck her in at night.

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**Author's Note: **_Now_ I'm back.


End file.
